Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- After watching “Contagion,” you
may not feel like shaking hands for a while.

Steven Soderbergh’s thriller is about a deadly global virus
that can be spread by incidental contact like touching someone
else’s drinking glass or dinner plate.

Starting with one person, it quickly spreads to millions
around the world. One minute you’ve got a headache, fever and
hacking cough. The next, you’re dead.

It’s a fertile subject, yet Soderbergh and screenwriter
Scott Z. Burns (who teamed on “The Informant!”) only scratch
the surface of its dramatic potential. “Contagion” is
cluttered with too many characters, leaving little room for any
of them to develop beyond archetypes.

Matt Damon is the grieving father and husband, Kate Winslet
the brave selfless doctor, Laurence Fishburne the concerned
public-health official, Jude Law the rabble-rousing blogger and
Marion Cotillard the dogged World Health Organization official
trying to find the source of the pandemic.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays Damon’s wife, who contracts the
disease on a business trip to Hong Kong and brings it home to
Minnesota. Even though she dies early in the film -- the first
victim of the virus -- we end up knowing as much about her
(through flashbacks) as the other characters.

Soderbergh takes us to London, Tokyo, China, Chicago,
Minneapolis and San Francisco, but never stays long enough to
establish any continuity.

The scenes of desperate people looting, robbing and
stampeding to get a dose of the scarce vaccine are realistic and
frightening. And the quick cutting does build tension.

Still, the film bogs down in the minutiae of tracking the
disease and finding a cure. Though lives are in danger, it’s
hard to get emotionally involved when you hardly know the people
at risk.

“Contagion,” from Warner Bros. Pictures, is playing
across the U.S. Rating: **1/2

‘Warrior’

“Warrior” is an electrifying, mixed martial arts version
of “The Fighter” about two estranged brothers heading for a
showdown at the sport’s biggest event.

This underdog story pushes every emotional button in a
winning way that doesn’t seem overly manipulative.

With two magnetic stars, Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, and a
gritty drama that builds to a pulsating climax, Gavin O’Connor’s
film should appeal to a wider audience than just those who like
to see people kicked, kneed and punched.

Tommy (Hardy, who played an even tougher guy in
“Bronson”) is an ex-Marine and former wrestling standout who
returns home after a long absence. He asks his reformed-drunk
father (Nick Nolte) to train him for a $5 million, winner-take-all MMA tournament in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Iraq Trauma

His brother Brendan (Edgerton), a former fighter now
teaching high-school physics, enters the same event in a long-shot bid to save his family home from foreclosure. Neither
brother knows the other is going to compete in the tournament.

Both resent their father, who left their mother during his
drinking days, and Tommy is also traumatized by his time as a
soldier in Iraq.

A more immediate concern is Koba, a ferocious, undefeated
Russian played by Olympic champion and pro wrestler Kurt Angle.
The realism of the brutal fight scenes is heightened by the
presence of actual MMA fighters like Erik “Bad” Apple and
Anthony “Rumble” Johnson.

“Warrior” is too violent and probably too corny for some
moviegoers. In the end, though, it’s hard to resist cheering for
these brawling brothers.